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The Assad files: How Syrian dictator handed 'Kill List' of hundreds of Islamic State fighters to British MPs

A ‘kill list’ of hundreds of foreign-born Islamic State fighters, including more than 20 Britons, has been drawn up by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

A dossier of the British fighters contained on a computer disc has been obtained by this newspaper. It was handed by President Assad to two Conservative MPs who were invited to visit the tyrant in Damascus in the spring.

The list targets for assassination 25 Britons whom the Assad regime accuses of joining the Islamic State. Fourteen on the list have already been killed including two of a trio of named brothers from Brighton who travelled to Syria two years ago have been killed by Syrian Army forces.

Eleven more jihadis are thought to be still alive, among them five women, including Khadijah Dare, who is accused by Assad of being the first Western female foreign fighter to join the Islamic State.

Also on the list is Sally Jones, a Muslim convert and mother-of-two who is thought to have taken one of her children to Syria, and two teenage twin school girls from Manchester.

Two brothers from Cardiff and a group of young men from Portsmouth are also on the list along with ‘Jihadi John’, the Islamic State executioner of a number of Western hostages.

The ‘kill list’ is accompanied by propaganda DVDs which were handed over to David Davis, the former shadow home affairs spokesman, and his Conservative colleague Adam Holloway.

The list itself is written in Arabic but the videos are narrated in English. “This film showcases samples of those criminals who perpetrated the most atrocious crimes against the Syrian people,” according to introduction to the videos, adding: “They are random samples possessed by the Syrian state amongst tens of thousands in the private archive of those international murderers.”

The Syrian state also accused a notorious hate preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed of radicalising young Britons and encouraging them to fight in Syria.

Omar Bakri, who was born in Syria, established a large network of Islamists in the UK before being forced into exile in Lebanon a decade ago. Omar Bakri is currently in jail in Lebanon having been convicted of terrorism offences there.

The UK has its own list of targets and the disclosure of an Assad ‘kill list’ will raise speculation that, through back channels at least, the two countries may even be sharing some intelligence.

The UK and US governments have sanctioned drone attacks on a number of British Islamic State fighters including Mohammed Emwazi, the real identity of ‘Jihadi John’, who was killed by a US military strike in November, and Reyaad Khan, 21 from Cardiff, who was killed in an “act of self-defence” in an RAF “precision air strike” in September last year. Junaid Hussain, 21, a computer hacker from Birmingham, was also killed in a drone strikes by US military.

Professor Anthony Glees, director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at Buckingham University, said: "The real significance of this list is that it shows how hard Assad is trying to establish the credentials of his government while at the same time adding to David Cameron's security headache in the region.

"Although these British (terrorist) names are well known to our own security services, the value of the intelligence will be details of aliases, or other information, which they might be using to return to the UK and plan terrorist attacks here.

"Assad is seeking to curry favour with the British government and, with his Russian backers (whose own security services may have contributed to the list), hopes to extend an olive branch of sorts to the West. With Putin on his side it's not easy to predict an early departure for the Syrian leader."

The Assad ‘kill list’ was handed over to the British delegation seemingly as propaganda to show the Syrian Government was committed to fighting Islamic State terrorist who have been threatening the West.

But security sources said that that it was very unlikely that there was any intelligence sharing with the Assad regime as the situation in country was ‘too chaotic’.

Elements of the list appear chaotic and not up to date. The true identity of ‘Jihadi John’ was not known at the time the ‘kill list’ was compiled and the Assad regime were not aware of his actual name.

Mr Davis said of his visit in April: “What we got from the government was a mixture of propaganda and self-delusion, mixed together with some hard facts. An example of the self-delusion arose whenever we talked about their civil war. ‘It is not a civil war,’ they insisted, ‘We are being attacked by foreign fighters and enemy states’.” Mr Davis added: ‘Well, up to a point.

The only jihadist group that is led and dominated by foreign fighters is Islamic State. The others may in part be acting as proxies for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, but they are predominantly Syrian people led by Syrian commanders, at least in the country itself. But to recognise that is to recognise that those Syrians had a grievance against the state, which the Syrian State refuses to do.”

Mr Davis said when he pressed Government officials on allegations of murder, torture and mistreatment by security services and soldiers, “they insisted that they had mechanisms in place to deal with this – but they could not tell me why there had not been a single prosecution for such crimes.

The capture, torture and murder of British doctor Abbas Khan proves that they have not yet mended their ways.”

Among the 850 foreign fighters on the list is a German rapper dubbed ‘the Goebbels of ISIS’ who publicly threatened President Barack Obama. Denis Cuspert, also known by his artist name Deso Dogg, used to rap in Berlin and was one of the most high-profile Western fighters for the Islamic State.

He was killed in October last year. The Chechen killer Omar al-Shishani, a senior ISIL commander, is among many well-known terrorists who the Syrians have placed on the list. There are conflicting reports as to whether he is alive.

The Assad ‘kill list’ will provoke outrage over its inclusion at number four of a junior British doctor killed after president Bashar al-Assad’s forces shelled the hospital he was working in. Isa Abdur Rahman, 26, died in may 2013 in a mortar attack on a hospital in Idlib province.

Dr Rahman had left his position with the Royal free Hospital in north London to volunteer with a British charity working in Syria. At the time, Islamic State had still to get a grip on rebel-held areas.

Dr Rahman had flown to Syria in 2012, helping civilians in areas caught up in the bitter civil war between forces loyal to Assad and opposition fighters. Dr Rahman was buried in Atmeh, a village close to the Turkish border, where he had helped to set up a clinic after first arriving in Syria.

He subsequently moved to a field hospital in Idlib which was where he was working when it came under attack and he was killed. There is no justification for Dr Rahman being included on a list that includes the likes of ‘Jihadi John’ and other British jihadi terrorists.

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